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I had cautiously gotten into management because I wanted to learn the skills of delegatin and really building through others and growing/coaching others. I th

I had cautiously gotten into management because I wanted to learn the skills of delegatin and really building through others and growing/coaching others. I thoroughly enjoyed this. But over time what I had realized was the role had been changing (not sure if it was just for pandering) towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, layoffs anybody?) As if they were on purely my own. Given Ive always enjoyed building this may actually be a good forcing function to go back to IC and just ... Build!

buffet_overflow 4y ago
Oh how I don’t miss those days of management. It because a theory of mine that a large part of my job function was to simultaneously water down accountability from above, while adding enough complexity to the layers below me to discourage them from changing the status quo. The double edged sword being, without that authority, that same power structure is forced on me, and now I’m more aware of it.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  I have a feeling being in middle management leads to that squeeze. If you're closer to the doing, you are more isolated from the companyspeak nonsense. If you are in the upper part of the food chain, you get to enjoy more influence, freedom, a better risk/reward tradeoff, with costs you mention. In the middle you're kind of screwed from both ends.
  - AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
    [dead]
- flashgordon 4y ago
  I had a couple of accidental ah-ha moments about this. Before I got into management all managers (fully up the stack) seemed like pointy hairs bosses. But what is easy to miss in Dilbert is that the PHB is really part of exec suite and rarely your front line manager. A hated front line manager might be usually incompetent or just inexperienced than evil! The other thing was demonization of front line managers. There was always a terrible (there are definitely terrible traits) managers but never terrible "leaders". Even worse was you'd see articles by hr "influencers" expounding this. Where are the same hr loud speakers now that "leadership" is the one inflicting these layoffs and ridiculous policies?
nerdponx 4y ago
> As if they were on purely my own Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?
- superjan 4y ago
  In general, if you want your reports to accept company decisions, it is in your interest as a manager to align your stated opinions with company policy. Openly disagreeing, or just trying to take a neutral position will only reduce faith in the company and sow unrest for which you will be held accountable.
  - joxel 4y ago
    If it’s in your interest to lie you should probably get a job that doesn’t make you a shithead.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Isn’t that the entire purpose of being a manager? If I were just going to repeat the company line and not advocate for my team then I might as well be a rock.
    - superjan 4y ago
      You can and should do both. What I wrote above is a job a manager has to do every now and then, not the fun part, but also hard to evade.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - RugnirViking 4y ago
    "I don't like it either. Here's what I'm doing to try to get them to change course. In the meantime, we need to do xyz, and I need you to do abc as part of that" I have absolubtely had managers that did an excellent job of making us feel like we were in it together. In fact I'd say its one of the key skills of being a manager at all?
- 4y ago
hello_moto 4y ago
> towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, layoffs anybody?) As if they were on purely my own. The role doesn't change though. It has been like that forever. This is another part of Management (whether you like it or not). Management should be seen as a cohesive "Leadership" unit because if the leaders aren't on the same page, what good are them? The other thing about Management/Leadership is that they should be able to relay the message in the right format and at the right level for their direct reports. C-level typically have OKR/Objective in 3-5 bullet points (the bigger the company, the more bullet points) and it's the VP and Dir jobs to break these individual points to high-level goals for their Organizations. It is the Manager's job to distill it even further to their level + their direct reports. It's one way to keep ICs on the same frequency with leadership and to execute for a common goal. Most ICs don't want to attend meetings, don't want to hear "high-level goals", and more importantly, don't have the skill to consume those high-level goals at their level. They need help from various layers of leaderships. Sure, there are those exceptional ICs that wouldn't mind to be involved at that level and understood the social/human aspect part of the work but let's be frank here: majority of ICs just want to bang keyboard, produce clean code, and marvel at the end results (ignoring everything in between).
conductr 4y ago
The best thing you can do in these roles is protect your team. It's your primary job to ensure they can build and with minimal wasted efforts. If you view it as building for the company, your team is a victim to all the dysfunctions of the organization and nobody wants to be on that team. The mouthpiece part is tricky, I always try to give the official message with a dose of my personal candid opinion on it even if it's in opposition. You just can't lay it on too thick and try to find a way to spin it to a positive as to not be demotivating for the team, "it might be challenging, but at least we'll learn X and they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds."
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds. Not that I expect them to do anything with it…
  - conductr 4y ago
    Agree. Their decision is made. The way I manage I tell upper management what risks their decisions have, then don’t let them blame my team for when those eventualities occur. My teams don’t work overtime to meet a deadline when some decisions was made that screwed up the schedule. Those kinds of things. That’s protecting your team.
mr_gibbins 4y ago
I've recently held a senior management position then left and obtained a technical position at a different organisation. Not kidding, I nearly cried with happiness moving away from SM and into a tech position again. I was GIVEN work to do. I had NO responsibilities for others. Moreover, I was DISCOURAGED from attending unnecessary meetings. I arranged no meetings! Not one! Went from 7 direct reports to zero. No more approving holiday requests. No more performance reviews. No more management town-halls. No more arguing strategy with anyone. It was brilliant. 'Please write a procedure that does X. Return it by Thursday.' 'Please optimise this statement that hangs during the overnight run'. Yes, absolutely, more of that please. More money too, oddly.
- adriand 4y ago
  I too went from management back to coding (freelance) since the start of the pandemic and I also love it. Today I happened to notice that Google Calendar was reporting an anomalous week in terms of meetings: I had 2.5 hours of meetings in my calendar this week, while my average right now is 1.2. I average less than an hour and a half of meetings per week! I have so much more time in my life for the things I love, it’s crazy.
solarmist 4y ago
Why did you have to "relay decisions I didn't believe in as if they were on purely my own"? Why could you not say "I disagree with X, Y, and Z, but I am going to follow through with it because 1, 2, and 3"?
- flashgordon 4y ago
  Depending on the company saying I don't believe X gets relayed back up your chain with eventual unpleasant consequences (hey so and so doesn't agree with this management decision so they must be a misfit and can't be trusted to put the company first)
  - solarmist 4y ago
    Absolutely, but also a massive red flag if you can’t respectfully disagree with your bosses.
    - flashgordon 4y ago
      Absolutely. There is no disrespect anywhere here. I don't need to agree to do my job well. Just that I don't feel safe enough to be vocal about sharing my thoughts -)
      - solarmist 4y ago
        Totally understandable. It’s the person in power’s job to do that not yours. I would probably do the same.

buffet_overflow 4y ago

Oh how I don’t miss those days of management. It because a theory of mine that a large part of my job function was to simultaneously water down accountability from above, while adding enough complexity to the layers below me to discourage them from changing the status quo. The double edged sword being, without that authority, that same power structure is forced on me, and now I’m more aware of it.

rich_sasha 4y ago
I have a feeling being in middle management leads to that squeeze. If you're closer to the doing, you are more isolated from the companyspeak nonsense. If you are in the upper part of the food chain, you get to enjoy more influence, freedom, a better risk/reward tradeoff, with costs you mention. In the middle you're kind of screwed from both ends.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
  [dead]
flashgordon 4y ago
I had a couple of accidental ah-ha moments about this. Before I got into management all managers (fully up the stack) seemed like pointy hairs bosses. But what is easy to miss in Dilbert is that the PHB is really part of exec suite and rarely your front line manager. A hated front line manager might be usually incompetent or just inexperienced than evil! The other thing was demonization of front line managers. There was always a terrible (there are definitely terrible traits) managers but never terrible "leaders". Even worse was you'd see articles by hr "influencers" expounding this. Where are the same hr loud speakers now that "leadership" is the one inflicting these layoffs and ridiculous policies?

nerdponx 4y ago

> As if they were on purely my own Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?

superjan 4y ago
In general, if you want your reports to accept company decisions, it is in your interest as a manager to align your stated opinions with company policy. Openly disagreeing, or just trying to take a neutral position will only reduce faith in the company and sow unrest for which you will be held accountable.
- joxel 4y ago
  If it’s in your interest to lie you should probably get a job that doesn’t make you a shithead.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Isn’t that the entire purpose of being a manager? If I were just going to repeat the company line and not advocate for my team then I might as well be a rock.
  - superjan 4y ago
    You can and should do both. What I wrote above is a job a manager has to do every now and then, not the fun part, but also hard to evade.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- RugnirViking 4y ago
  "I don't like it either. Here's what I'm doing to try to get them to change course. In the meantime, we need to do xyz, and I need you to do abc as part of that" I have absolubtely had managers that did an excellent job of making us feel like we were in it together. In fact I'd say its one of the key skills of being a manager at all?
4y ago

hello_moto 4y ago

> towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, layoffs anybody?) As if they were on purely my own. The role doesn't change though. It has been like that forever. This is another part of Management (whether you like it or not). Management should be seen as a cohesive "Leadership" unit because if the leaders aren't on the same page, what good are them? The other thing about Management/Leadership is that they should be able to relay the message in the right format and at the right level for their direct reports. C-level typically have OKR/Objective in 3-5 bullet points (the bigger the company, the more bullet points) and it's the VP and Dir jobs to break these individual points to high-level goals for their Organizations. It is the Manager's job to distill it even further to their level + their direct reports. It's one way to keep ICs on the same frequency with leadership and to execute for a common goal. Most ICs don't want to attend meetings, don't want to hear "high-level goals", and more importantly, don't have the skill to consume those high-level goals at their level. They need help from various layers of leaderships. Sure, there are those exceptional ICs that wouldn't mind to be involved at that level and understood the social/human aspect part of the work but let's be frank here: majority of ICs just want to bang keyboard, produce clean code, and marvel at the end results (ignoring everything in between).

conductr 4y ago

The best thing you can do in these roles is protect your team. It's your primary job to ensure they can build and with minimal wasted efforts. If you view it as building for the company, your team is a victim to all the dysfunctions of the organization and nobody wants to be on that team. The mouthpiece part is tricky, I always try to give the official message with a dose of my personal candid opinion on it even if it's in opposition. You just can't lay it on too thick and try to find a way to spin it to a positive as to not be demotivating for the team, "it might be challenging, but at least we'll learn X and they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds."

Aeolun 4y ago
> they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds. Not that I expect them to do anything with it…
- conductr 4y ago
  Agree. Their decision is made. The way I manage I tell upper management what risks their decisions have, then don’t let them blame my team for when those eventualities occur. My teams don’t work overtime to meet a deadline when some decisions was made that screwed up the schedule. Those kinds of things. That’s protecting your team.

mr_gibbins 4y ago

I've recently held a senior management position then left and obtained a technical position at a different organisation. Not kidding, I nearly cried with happiness moving away from SM and into a tech position again. I was GIVEN work to do. I had NO responsibilities for others. Moreover, I was DISCOURAGED from attending unnecessary meetings. I arranged no meetings! Not one! Went from 7 direct reports to zero. No more approving holiday requests. No more performance reviews. No more management town-halls. No more arguing strategy with anyone. It was brilliant. 'Please write a procedure that does X. Return it by Thursday.' 'Please optimise this statement that hangs during the overnight run'. Yes, absolutely, more of that please. More money too, oddly.

adriand 4y ago
I too went from management back to coding (freelance) since the start of the pandemic and I also love it. Today I happened to notice that Google Calendar was reporting an anomalous week in terms of meetings: I had 2.5 hours of meetings in my calendar this week, while my average right now is 1.2. I average less than an hour and a half of meetings per week! I have so much more time in my life for the things I love, it’s crazy.

solarmist 4y ago

Why did you have to "relay decisions I didn't believe in as if they were on purely my own"? Why could you not say "I disagree with X, Y, and Z, but I am going to follow through with it because 1, 2, and 3"?

flashgordon 4y ago
Depending on the company saying I don't believe X gets relayed back up your chain with eventual unpleasant consequences (hey so and so doesn't agree with this management decision so they must be a misfit and can't be trusted to put the company first)
- solarmist 4y ago
  Absolutely, but also a massive red flag if you can’t respectfully disagree with your bosses.
  - flashgordon 4y ago
    Absolutely. There is no disrespect anywhere here. I don't need to agree to do my job well. Just that I don't feel safe enough to be vocal about sharing my thoughts -)
    - solarmist 4y ago
      Totally understandable. It’s the person in power’s job to do that not yours. I would probably do the same.